H. Beam Piper

Keep a goverment poor and weak and it's your servant; when it is rich and powerful it becomes your master.

— H. Beam Piper

“What I object to is the way you're raiding the Sword-Worlds." "You're crazy!" Basil Gorram exploded. "Young man," Harkaman reproved, "the conversation…

— H. Beam Piper

English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the…

— H. Beam Piper

And when someone makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell him he's crazy. Ask him what he means.

— H. Beam Piper

“Simon, speaking as one sovereign prince to another, you have a lot to learn. You've learned one important lesson already, that a…

— H. Beam Piper

Sanity, it would seem, was a dangerously contagious disease.

— H. Beam Piper

“On Aditya, such would be unthinkable; on Aditya, everybody respects authority. Whether it's respectable or not.”

— H. Beam Piper

Apparently, on New Texas, killing a politician was not malum in se, and was mallum prohibitorum only to the extent that what…

— H. Beam Piper

Take a drink because you pity yourself, and then the drink pities you and has a drink, and then two good drinks…

— H. Beam Piper

Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything,…

— H. Beam Piper

“You mean, the people are armed?" Prince Bentrik was incredulous. "Great Satan, aren't yours?" Prince Trask was equally surprised. "Then your democracy's…

— H. Beam Piper

“It should belong to everybody. Let us call it the Commonwealth. That means something everybody owns in common." "Something everybody owns, nobody…

— H. Beam Piper

Vengeance is a strange human motivation --- it can drive a man to do things which he neither would nor could achieve…

— H. Beam Piper

“I wanted to find out why. But when Professor Dandrik saw what was happening, he became almost hysterical, and ordered the accelerator…

— H. Beam Piper

“It may just be," he added, "that there is something fundamentally unworkable about government itself. As long as Homo sapiens terra is…

— H. Beam Piper

“It was a bland, tranquilized, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face -- the face turned out in thousands of copies every year by…

— H. Beam Piper

“Well, that was one thing you had to give [Makann] credit for. He wanted to run out the Gilgameshers. Everybody was in…

— H. Beam Piper

I had a lot of other ideas, now and then, but every time I took a second look at one, it got…

— H. Beam Piper

English is the product of a Saxon warrior trying to make a date with an Angle bar-maid, and as such is no…

— H. Beam Piper

“I'm sorry, Prince Edvard. You had a wonderful civilization here on Marduk. You could have made almost anything of it. But it's…

— H. Beam Piper

“Does the Convocation make the laws?" Erskyll asked. Hozhet was perplexed. "Make laws, Lord Proconsul? Oh, no. We have laws." There were…

— H. Beam Piper

You know, it's quite all right to give the underdog a hand, but only one hand. Keep the other hand on your…

— H. Beam Piper

“Then the Yo-Yo was coming around again, and Vann Larch was saying, "Gehenna with this fooling around! I'll fix the expurgated unprintability!”

— H. Beam Piper

I like it where it gets dark at night, and if you want noise, you have to make it yourself.

— H. Beam Piper

“Well, our operations are definable as robbery and murder," he agreed. "Space Vikings are professional robbers and murderers.”

— h. Beam Piper